Nikki Georgopulos has written a very extensive piece for the Plundered Art blog about the man issues with Senate Bill S2212 (the Foreign Cultural Exchange Judicial Immunity Clarification Act). While the act gives the impression of helping the current situation, in reality it causes as many problems as it solves.

Her article is in two parts.

Part 1.

Part 2.

Keri Douglas has organised a talk in Washington this Friday, on Art, antiquities & law. The talk is being given by Marc Masurovsky, co-founder of the Holocaust Art Restitution Project.

Visit the event’s website for full details & to purchase tickets.

From:
Eventbrite

Art, Antiquities & War: Is Our Obsession to Posses Art Above the Law Lecture Series
Keri Douglas
Friday, October 19, 2012 from 12:00 PM to 1:30 PM (EDT)
Washington, United States

Event Details
Marc Masurovsky, editor of plundered-art.blogspot.com and co-founder of the Holocaust Art Restitution Project will discuss the merits and challenges of the current legislation (S.2212) being considered in the U.S. Senate that potentially would give full immunity for any cultural object regardless of origin, whether licit or not, to enter the United States for cultural display without fear of being the subject of a legal claim. The proposed bill also exempts a small category of objects that were “taken” under Nazi rule—the so-called “Nazi exception”. At stake are the challenges that foreign lenders face in light of S. 2212 as well as potential or actual claimants seeking the return of their looted property.
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The Foreign Cultural Exchange Jurisdictional Immunity Clarification Act has stirred up quite a bit of controversy in the USA.

Many who have examined the bill (S. 2212) say that despite exemptions in the planned law, it is only really there to protect the interests of the big museums – while reducing the chances of recovering looted artefacts by the original owners (or their descendants).

From:
New York Times

Dispute Over Bill on Borrowed Art
The heirs of Malevich sought to recover paintings, including the ones displayed above center and right.
By DOREEN CARVAJAL
Published: May 21, 2012

The lending and borrowing of famous artworks is the essence of cultural exchange between museums in the United States and abroad. So routine is the practice, and so universally valued, that the American government has traditionally protected it with a law that shields a lent work from being seized by anyone with a claim to legal ownership while the art is on display here.

In recent years, though, American museum directors have come to fear that this safeguard has eroded, and that foreign museums, dreading entanglement in costly ownership battles, are more hesitant to make loans. So they have asked Congress to increase the security for global art swaps.
Read the rest of this entry »

Marc Masurovsky has helped me out, by going into some of the issues with the Foreign Cultural Exchange Jurisdictional Immunity Clarification Act.

The bill has now been introduced in the Senate as S. 2212. The worry is, that many of the successful cases that have been brought in the US in recent years, to secure the return of looted cultural property would no longer be possible. For those of you in the USA, the Senators supporting the bill are: Dianne Feinstein and Orrin Hatch. As he points out, Fenstein has many major museums within her community, which includes San Francisco & Los Angeles.

As Marc says “It’s the end of art restitution as we know it.” Supporting such a bill would be a backward step for the country that is currently one of the more forward thinking (well compared to the UK at any rate) in terms of cultural property restitutions & the legal framework that allows them to take place. “After all, once you write a bill that carries with it select exclusions, it implies that you tolerate other forms of looted art to enter the US for display. Hence, the clarification to the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act should either be all-inclusive or dropped entirely. It is absolutely critical for source countries to express themselves”.

Doubtless, many organisations such as the AAMD are unlikely to agree with this point of view.

More details of the act can be found in my original post on it.